Integrated circuits are ubiquitous in modern electronic devices and systems. These highly complex systems are typically manufactured through exceedingly complicated, multi-step processes which include photolithographic printing, chemical processing, and handling. Such modern systems contain a variety of circuits including digital, analog, and mixed-signal components which are difficult and expensive to manufacture. Feature sizes of the components now comprising such systems are routinely smaller than the wavelength of visible light. In addition, the rapidly changing demands of the various markets which consume the chips drive ever-increasing device count, performance, feature sets, system versatility, and a variety of other system demands which impose contradictory design requirements on the design process. System designers are required to make significant tradeoffs in their designs to balance system performance, physical size, architectural complexity, power consumption, heat dissipation, fabrication complexity, and cost, to name only a few. Each design decision exercises a profound influence on the resulting system design.
A specification to which system designers design and test their electronic systems is the standard against which a system is compared. Therefore, the systems designers must ensure that their designs conform to the systems specification. The specification defines electrical performance, feature size, power consumption, heat dissipation, operating temperature range, temperature cycles, mechanical performance, and the like, and so on.